A mission for the next generation: Fix suburbia

The second category, redevelopment, is where you tend to get the environmentally sustainable features. That’s where you see an underperforming property more or less bulldozed and urbanized — building on top of parking lots and putting in much more up-to-date green infrastructure. And those projects that stand out — places like Belmar in Lakewood, Colo., outside of Denver — have done a remarkable job of replacing a 100-acre big mall with 22 walkable blocks, lots of green buildings and public streets. It’s the downtown that Lakewood never had. There are about 15 of those projects built in the country now, and another 25 that are in various stages of development. The economy definitely slowed the progress on a lot of the big dead mall retrofit redevelopment. But there are all kinds of redevelopment. Sometimes it’s infilling office parks. In some cases it’s entire subdivisions...